Forbidden Game: The Hunter (to a different spin)
by Juliette2
Summary: My own personal spin-off of Forbidden Game: The Hunter. Quite humorous in my opinion.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1  
  
Jenny, whose hair is the color of honey in the sunlight, and whose eyebrows are like two decisive brush strokes, and whose eyes were the color of pine needles, was walking down Eastman Avenue one day. Even though that was a very rough part of town, Jenny isn't all that intelligent about keeping herself out of danger. She was throwing her boyfriend Tom, with his rakish, devil-may-care smile, his birthday party today, but alas- She didn't have anything planned!!! She had been planning a pool party, but goddamnit a cold snap had come a long and ruined EVERYTHING!!! So she had come to the dangerous part of town so that none of her friends would see her (oh, the embarrassment!!), in search of some sort of game they could play tonight.  
  
She kept glancing and glancing and glancing over her shoulder, because she could hear the pitter-patter of footsteps, which belonged to two SCARY looking guys!!  
  
She wanted to find a very special game. Something glamorous enough for Audrey, sexy (OOH BABY) enough for Tom, and frightening enough for Dee. Something seven people could play at once.  
  
The pitter-patter of footsteps had turned into a loud clompity-clomp!!! They were very close, and were approaching more quickly than before!! AAAHHH!!!  
  
She looked down Montevideo, and realized that the record store wall had a mural on it. The mural was of a street that looked much like Eastman Avenue before those damned riots had to come and ruin everything. Strange- Parts of the mural looked oh-so-real!!! Like that storefront painted in the middle, the one with the sign Jenny couldn't quite make out (due to her forgetting put in her contact lenses yet AGAIN). It had a door with a hand that seemed three-dimensional. In fact...  
  
Startled (for what reason, no one knew why), Jenny took a step toward it. As she looked more closely, she could see undoubtedly that the door was real.  
  
Oh sweet Moses!!! IT COULDN'T BE!!! …And yet it was. There was a door stuck in the middle of the mural.  
  
Jenny didn't know or care why. She needed to get off the street and away from those creepy guys, and so she stood and said a little prayer to Mohammed in front of the door, that it could please, please be unlocked.  
  
She grabbed the knob and…it turned in her hand!!! The door swung inward, and she could see a dimly lit room.  
  
After but a moment of hesitation, Jenny leapt inside with a whoop.  
  
Just as she did, she squinted, consciously taking in the sign above the door, which read…(can you stand the suspense???)… "More Games." 


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2  
  
Of course there were no windows looking out on Montevideo, so she couldn't see whether or not the two grizzly dudes had followed her. Still, she felt an avalanche of relief crash over her. No one was going to find her in here (dun dun DUN…thunderous music of apprehension).  
  
Then Jenny wondered, how could there be More Games when there hadn't been any games at all yet? (Jenny's not the brightest bulb in the box…)  
  
How convenient that she'd stumbled into a game store when what she need was a game!!!! And a bit odd as well…  
  
As she looked around she realized just how strange this store was. Jenny felt as though she'd stepped into another world as she eyed the various exotic shelves, tables, and racks with her fuzzy, contact-deprived vision. Could they all really be games??? They couldn't, shouldn't, wouldn't be!! They shan't be!!! She stared, squinting around at the shelves, her mouth hanging wide open in amazement.  
  
God, what a weird triangular chessboard. What the hell were the people who made that thinking? Nobody could really play on a board like that, could they? It looked as ancient as old Grandmother Erma. So did a metalwork box that Jenny knew she damned well couldn't afford. Some of the games she could identify, others she could not.  
  
The strange antique things were intermixed with the strange ultramodern things, and that was the weirdest thing of all. On the back wall a cork bulletin board sported signs the read: "I Need Your Sex Jenny," "You Will Be Mine for Eternity Jenny," "I Want to Grasp Your Honey-In-the- Sunlight Hair Jenny," "Your Boobies Will Only Bounce for Me Jenny." Cyberpunk, Jenny thought, vaguely recognizing the terms. From a record player on the counter came slow easy listening favorites.  
  
This is an extremely peculiar place, thought Jenny.  
  
Everything outside felt so far away. As if time were a figment of her imagination. Even the sunlight shining in swirling motions all through the room seemed wrong.  
  
You're one screwed up motherfucker, she told herself. Messed up in the head. And no wonder, after the day you've had (poor POOR Jenny, boo- fucking-hoo). Just concentrate of finding a game, if there's anything here you're intelligent enough to play.  
  
In a square shape, there was another sign on a little piece of notebook paper:  
  
J E N N  
  
Y Y O U  
  
H O T B  
  
I T C H  
  
Jenny examined it, squinting her eyes, her eyebrows like two decisive brushstrokes narrowing. What did the letters say? Frustratingly they all kept blurring together. (Poor Jenny's having trouble with the little box of letters, isn't she? Stupid ass! It's not THAT hard) Oh, of course, she had it now (FINALLY, it's about time!). Jen…  
  
A voice spoke from right behind her, "Can I help you?"  
  
Jenny turned- and lost her breath, falling to the floor gasping.  
  
Eyes (Yes Jenny, he has eyes. Whoop-de-doo). Blue eyes (Blue?? NO WAY!!!). Except they weren't just blue, they were a shade Jenny couldn't describe (Jenny doesn't have a very big vocabulary). His eyes were a color she'd only seen once when she happened to wake up at the precise instant of dawn. These eyes were surrounded by black lashes so heavy that they caused his eyelids to droop like an old dog's. His hair was true white (whatever that means), the color of frost or tendrils of mist. He looked as though he'd just stepped in from another world. He was exotically, uncannily beautiful, and Jenny immediately thought what it would be like to have wild sex with him. She forgot Tom's existence.  
  
I didn't know real people could look like that, if he's real, maybe he's not real (GOD Jenny, make up your mind!!!).  
  
She couldn't stop staring. His eyes were like the blue at the core of a flame. No- like a mile-deep lake set in a glacier. No- like blueberries!! No- like a fishing pond. No…  
  
The guy turned and went to the counter to turn off the record player. Silence roared in Jenny's ears like a lion out on the hunt, hunt, hunt.  
  
"Can I help you?" he repeated, as if talking to an old lady who is hard of hearing.  
  
Heat rose to Jenny's cheeks, and flames burst out of her face.  
  
Ohmygod!! What he must think of me!!!  
  
The minute those eyes had turned away from her, she had come out of her hypnotic, sex-crazed trance, and now that he was further away, he was only a blur to her. Not something from another world, just a bunch of colors smeared together. Just a guy her own age. He was dressed in a strange combination of cyberpunk and Byronic poet.  
  
Who cares if he's beautiful, Jenny thought. On Tom's birthday too-  
  
Shame shot through her. She'd better start shopping or get out of here. Although she was still worried about the two creepy crawly guys outside.  
  
"I want to buy a game," she screamed in a shrill voice. "For a party- for my boyfriend."  
  
At the word boyfriend, he started blinking and blinking- He couldn't seem to stop. "Be my guest," he sang, in the tune from "Beauty and the Beast."  
  
"Anything in particular?"  
  
"Well…."  
  
"How about Senet, the Egyptian Game of the dead? Or the I-ching? Or perhaps you'd like to cast the runes." His voice was full of elemental music, like water running over a rock.  
  
Jenny didn't know what the hell he was talking about. She felt very confused, as she often does.  
  
"Well there's the ancient Tibetan game of goats and tigers. The fierce tigers stalk the little innocent goats, and the goats try to run from the tigers." His voice was full of elemental music, like water running over a rock.  
  
"I- no." Was he making fun of her? There was something to the way that his mouth was twisting and twisting that made Jenny think yes. (Sadly he's not the only one laughing at you Jenny…)  
  
"Mystery. Danger. Seduction. Fear. Hats. Toys. Sex." His voice was full of elemental music, like water running over a rock. "Secrets revealed. Desires unveiled. Clothes removed." He smiled at her from ear to ear as he pronounced the last word distinctly: "Temptation."  
  
"What the fuck are you talking about??" she said, tensed to bitch slap him or run if he took one step toward her.  
  
He didn't. His eyes were a color she'd only seen once when she'd happened to wake up at the precise instant of dawn. "The Game, of course. That's what you want isn't it? Something…very special."  
  
Something very special.  
  
Exactly what she'd thought to herself. (OHMYGOD, what a coincidence!!!!!)  
  
"We do have something like that in stock," he said, and then disappeared into the back room. When he returned, he said, "I think that this is what you've been looking for."  
  
"You've GOT to be joking!!!" she shouted.  
  
It was a plain, boring-assed white box.  
  
Jenny waited and waited and waited and waited for the punch line.  
  
There was something about it though. The more she looked at the box, the more she wanted to touch it, caress it, hold it against her ripe young body… She really wanted to.  
  
"Could I see it?" she asked ever so hopefully.  
  
"Well…I don't know. On second thought I'm not sure I can sell it to you after all," he said.  
  
"Why not????" she shrieked in an ear-splitting fashion.  
  
"Because it really is special. I can't let it go to just anybody, or for just any reason. Maybe if you explained what it was for…"  
  
She said in a monotone voice, "It for a party tonight, for my boyfriend,  
  
Tom-Tom-Tommy. He's seventeen today. Tomorrow night we'll have the big party- you know, with everyone invited, but tonight it's just our crowd. Our exclusive clique."  
  
He tilted his head to one side, and held it there for the rest of their encounter in the store. Light flashed off the kitty-cat earring he was wearing. "So?" he bellowed.  
  
"So I need something for us to do. You can't just get seven people in a room, throw onions at them, and expect them to have a groovy time. I've screwed up massively by not getting organized until now (No kidding Jen- Jen). And Tom-"  
  
"And Tom will care?" he said, as if not believing it.  
  
Jenny felt defensive. "I don't know- He might be disappointed, which I couldn't BEAR! He deserves better, you see," "He's-" Oh, how to explain Tom Locke? (Well, you COULD easily describe as having a rakish, devil-may- care smile…) "Well, he's devilishly handsome, he'll have lettered in three sports by the end of this year (DAMN, what an accomplishment), and he's wonderful. We've been together forever, and I've loved him with all of my heart of hearts since the second grade. He's absolutely the best boyfriend in the whole wide world. (Wow Jenny can really ramble on about him, can't she?)."  
  
"You can hold it if you want (he meant the box)," he said gently.  
  
"Okay," Jenny said excitedly. She took the glossy box gingerly between her palms- and forgot everything else (Jenny's memory isn't very good). There was a quality about it that Jenny couldn't describe (Jenny really should do some Hooked-On-Phonics to widen that vocabulary of hers), a sort of electric current that ran through her body, turning her on as she held it. "Mmm…" she murmured.  
  
"We're closing," the boy screamed at the top of his lungs, with another of his arbitrary mood swings. "You gonna buy it?"  
  
She was. She knew perfectly well that anyone crazy enough to buy a box without looking inside it deserved whatever they got, but Jenny never cared about that sort of thing. She wanted it. No matter what, for once she would have a great story to tell Tom and the others tonight. "The craziest thing happened to me today…"  
  
"How much?" she inquired.  
  
"Call it twenty (what the hell else would you call it?)," he chanted.  
  
Jenny paid. When she looked up, the boy was smiling at her breasts.  
  
"Enjoy," he whispered, and then his heavy lashes drooped, as if at a private joke.  
  
From somewhere a clock chimed an Elvis ditty that meant half past some hour. Jenny glanced down at her watch and let out a blood-curdling scream in horror.  
  
Seven-thirty- It couldn't BE!!! Why oh WHY had she lost track of the time???!!! There was no way she been in the store over an hour, but it was true. All of that lustful staring at the beautiful boy had just made the time fly! (Shame on you Jenny, and on Tom's birthday none the less!)  
  
"Thank you; I have to go. Uh- see you later," she growled distractedly, hippity-hopping toward the door.  
  
"At nine," he answered very matter-of-factly, but Jenny isn't a very good listener, so she comprehended it as being, "That's fine," or something like that.  
  
He was standing half in shadow when she looked back. For just a second she caught something in his eyes- a hungry look. Like- a portly man waiting for his second dinner of the day. It turned Jenny on so much that her "goodbye" came out as a gasping moan.  
  
Then it was gone. The boy reached over and turned the easy listening favorites back on.  
  
Terrific soundproofing, Jenny thought as the door closed behind her and the music was shut off. She shook her entire body limb by limb, throwing off the lingering image of those blue eyes, which were a color she'd only seen once when she'd happened to wake up at the precise moment of dawn. Now if she raced all the way home, she might just have time to throw some Swiss cheese in the microwave. "Oh, LORDY LORDY, what a day!!" she sang to the sky.  
  
That was when she noticed the tough, nasty guys.  
  
They were waiting for her across the street. As Jenny saw them approaching, she reached behind her for the doorknob. Where was the damned thing? And why was she so stupid today? (How unfortunate that today is only one of many days that you are stupid Jenny…) Where was the fucking knob? All she could feel behind her was cool, painted concrete.  
  
1 Where is it where is it-  
  
Throw the box at them, she thought, suddenly calm and clear. Throw it and run. Her feeble mind ordered her hand to stop searching for a doorknob that wasn't there.  
  
She lifted the box with both hands to throw it. She wasn't sure exactly what happened next, although she wasn't always that quick about things. Both guys stared at her and then- they turned around and started galloping!  
  
Galloping. Flannels was in the lead, and Bandanna just a length behind him, and they were galloping like horses. Fast.  
  
Jenny hadn't thrown the box after all.  
  
My fingers…I didn't throw the box because I couldn't let go because my fingers…(Calm down Jenny, think a much more S-L-O-W-L-Y)  
  
Shut the fuck up, her mind told her. You're dumb enough to care more about a stupid-assed box than your own life.  
  
Walking quickly, holding the box over her head, she started for home.  
  
She didn't turn around to see how she'd missed the doorknob with all her behind-the-back fumbling. She simply forgot, due to the genius of her shitty memory.  
  
It was ten to eight when Jenny finally neared her street. Her hardened nipples were poking against her tiny tank top in the chill dark.  
  
Somewhere on the way home she'd begun to have doubts about the game. Her Mumsie had always said she was too damned impulsive. Now she'd bought this- thing- without knowing exactly what was inside!! Even as she thought it, the box seemed to vibrate slightly in her arms, filling her with desire.  
  
Don't be silly. It's a box.  
  
But those guys ran, something screamed in the back of her mind. They were scared to DEATH!!  
  
She was going to check this game out as soon as she got home. Thoroughly examine it.  
  
Once in the front hallway Jenny sniffed suspiciously through her flared nostrils. Tuna? Her parents were SUPPOSED to be leaving for the weekend!! Damned LIARS!!!  
  
Alarmed and pissed, she dumped her backpack- and the white box- on the living room coffee table as she danced into the kitchen.  
  
"At last! We were beginning to think you weren't coming!!"  
  
Jenny stared, googly-eyed. The girl who'd spoken was wear an army jacket and sitting on the counter, one incredible long leg braced against Jenny's Mumie's kitchen table, the other incredibly long leg dangling. Her hair was cropped so close to her head it looked like little nubs of black velvet on her skull. She was as beautiful as an African priestess (if you like manly-women), and was grinning in a mocking, sexual way.  
  
"Dee…" Jenny moaned.  
  
The other inhabitant of the kitchen was wearing a black and white checked jacket and Chanel earrings. (She's quite the rich-assed little Daddy's girl) She was wearing cherry lip gloss and her copper bangs were ever-so- spiky. Around her was a sea of utensils (although how many does one really need to prepare tuna??)  
  
"…and Audrey!!" Jenny said. "Whatever are y'all doin' here????"  
  
"Saving your sweet tooshie," Audrey answered nervously.  
  
"But- you're cooking!!" (No shit Jenny)  
  
"Of course, why shouldn't I cook??" Audrey ranted. "When Daddy was assigned to Canada, of course we had a chef. He taught me well. So naturally I can cook."  
  
While this speech was going on, Jenny was looking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth from one girl to the other. When it was over she burst into insane laughter, shaking her head to and fro. They knew her far to intimately- And they'd come to rescue her!!! (Oh, the valiance) Impulsively Jenny hugged each of them in turn, noticing the feeling their breasts touching hers.  
  
"Tom loves tuna, so I decided to take care of the food. But where have you been? Run into some kind of trouble??" she cooed.  
  
"Oh, no, no, no, no. I was just buying a game for tonight- but I don't know if we're going to need it after all," Jenny said.  
  
"WHY EVER NOT???"  
  
"Well…" Jenny didn't want or know how to explain that. She only knew she needed to look in that box before anyone else arrived. "It might be boring. So what are you making?"  
  
"Oh just some tuna," Audrey shrieked.  
  
"Tuna," said Dee, taking a fast gulp of Carbo Force, her favorite energy drink, "is a horrible way to die."  
  
"Tom loves it," Audrey shot back.  
  
Dee gave a haughty giggle, and hostility flashed across the room like lightning.  
  
Jenny sighed, watching them go at it was such a daily turn on. Still, she put in (being the good friend that she is), "Oh, get over it. Can't you call a truce for just one day in the year?"  
  
"I don't THINK so!!" Audrey sang in a valley-girl fashion.  
  
"And ruin a perfect record?" Dee drawled.  
  
"Look, I'm not going to have Tom's party ruined- not even by my two best friends in the whole wide world. Understand?"  
  
"Oh, go to your room and become the sexy temptress that we all know you are," Audrey screamed with a lusty smile and a raised eyebrow.  
  
The box, though Jenny- but she did have to change her clothes. She'd better make it fast. 


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3  
  
In her room, Jenny exchanged her tiny tank top and jeans for an old fashioned, granny-assed outfit, which included a skirt, blouse, and vest (who in their right mind wears a vest??). It was a pretty sorry sight to see. Tom (for what reason, no one knows) likes her to wear dull, ugly clothes, and Jenny, who never has any opinions of her own, wears whatever he likes without a second thought.  
  
Her eyes that were the color of pine needles were drawn to a pair of white, boring cotton panties with the words I can't wait to see you in these emblazoned across the ass. An Easter present from Tom, one she would keep forever and ever and ever and ever. Wearing them filled her desire and delight, as she would long to have wild sex with him all the livelong day.  
  
For as long as she could remember (which doesn't say much in Jenny's case), she'd been terribly in love with Tom. Whenever she thought of him, a sudden quick ache would overcome her, a hotness almost too much to bear! She felt it in various place of her body, but it was a sexual thing, mainly centered in her womanly areas. It had been that way since the second grade (oh Jenny you NAUGTY girl!!). Stuck around the frame of the mirror were naked pictures of them together- at the sixth grade Halloween Hop, at the ninth grade graduation dance, at the junior prom two weeks ago, at the beach. They had been a couple for so long that everyone thought of them as Tom-and-Jenny, a single unit.  
  
As always, the very image of Tom seemed to wrap a thin veil of desire over her. This time though, Jenny felt something tugging at her to think about it (we know how hard this is for you Jenny dear).  
  
The box again!!!  
  
Okay, go look at it. Then think PARTY TIME DUDE!!!  
  
She was brushing her honey-in-the-sunlight colored hair when there was an excruciating pounding on her door and Audrey came in.  
  
"The tuna is finished." Audrey's own hair, which she always wore up (it looks pretty shitty down), was copper colored. Her eyes were squinted in disapproval. "New skirt, I see," she screamed at the top of her lungs, "A frumpy one!!!"  
  
Jenny began to weep uncontrollably in utter sorrow. Tom liked her in frumpy skirts. Audrey knew it and Jenny knew she knew it and Audrey knew Jenny knew she knew it. "So?" she hiccupped dangerously.  
  
Audrey sighed for the next 10 minutes. "Can't you see? You're letting him get too sure of you."  
  
"Audrey, please-" she sobbed over and over.  
  
"There's such a thing as being too good," Audrey spat firmly. "Listen to me because I know everything. Guys are fucking weirdoes, hola? You never want one to be that sure of you."  
  
"Don't be ridiculous," Jenny wailed, then stopped suddenly. For some reason, for just a second, she thought of the guy at the game store. Eyes a color she'd only seen once when she happened to wake up at the precise instant of dawn.  
  
"I'm serious," Audrey was saying through her cherry-glossed lips, her head tilted back grotesquely to look at Jenny through spiky jet-black lashes that touched equally spiky copper bangs. "If a guy feels too secure, you lose his attention, he takes you for granted!! Starts sleeping with other girls. You want to keep him off balance, never knowing what you'll do next."  
  
"Like you do with Michael!!!" Jenny exclaimed.  
  
"Oh, Michael." Audrey made a dismissive gesture, jumping up and down. "He's just a good fuck until I find someone less rumpled. He's a bookmark. But do you see what I'm saying? Even Dee thinks you give in to Tom too much."  
  
"Dee???" Jenny cried out, raising her eyebrows that are like two decisive brush strokes. "Dee thinks all guys are lying motherfuckers. As boyfriends, anyway."  
  
"True!!!" shrieked Audrey. "It's strange," she added in a low, guttural voice, "how she can be so right about that and so insanely wrong about everything else."  
  
Jenny just made a monstrous face at her. Then she said, "You know, Audrey, maybe if you tried being nice first-"  
  
"Hmm, maybe…when the devil goes ice skating!!" Audrey bellowed.  
  
Jenny sighed. Audrey was the newcomer to their exclusive clique; she'd moved to Vista Grande last year. It's amazing she met the qualifications to be their friend at all. All the others had known each other since elementary school, and Dee had known Jenny the longest of all. When Audrey arrived, Dee had gotten – well, jealous out of her fucking mind! They'd been fighting ever since.  
  
"Just try not to kill each other at the party!!" Jenny howled. Deliberately she pulled her honey-in-the-sunlight colored hair back in a very unattractive fashion – the way Tom liked it – and anchored its silkiness with a large sparkly olive green bow.  
  
Then she threw Audrey a smile bursting with joy and excitedly said, "Let us travel back to the kitchen now!!"  
  
When they did they found that Michael and Zach had arrived – looking, as usual, as different as a tomato and a pickle.  
  
Michael Cohen was shaped like a rumpled teddy bear, with rumpled hair, rumpled clothes, and the eyes of a sarcastic spaniel. Zach Taylor had light hair pulled back into an intense, yet casual ponytail, an intense beaky-nosed face, and intense eyes as gray as the winter sky.  
  
"How's the flu?" Jenny asked, passionately kissing Zachary on his intense cheek. She could do this safely because she'd exposed to his nasty germs all week, and besides, he was her cousin. Zach's intense gray eyes softened for just an instant, then went cool again (It cannot be!! Zachary has had an emotion!!). Jenny was never quite sure if Zach liked her or merely tolerated her the way he did everyone else (icy bastard).  
  
"Hello, Michael!!" she shouted with merriment, giving him a peck instead of a kiss (holding out on old Mikey?). The sarcastic spaniel eyes turned toward her.  
  
"You know," Michael rambled, "sometimes I worry about us, about our whole generation. Do we know what we're doing? Are we any better than the Me Generation? What do we have to look forward to, except driving better cars that our parents? I mean what is the point?" (What the hell is he talking about???)  
  
"Hello, Michael," said Audrey.  
  
"Hello O light of my life. Is this tuna I see before me?" Michael sang, reaching.  
  
"Don't eat that. Put it on a plate and take it out to the living room," she screeched.  
  
"I am your eternal servant," Michael said and went skipping gaily out of the room.  
  
God – the box, Jenny thought. Michael was a goddamned snoop, reading your mail and opening your drawers. She followed him, whistling all the way.  
  
Her pulse quickened at the sight of it, even though it's just an unexciting white box on her Mumsie's coffee table. Jenny's living room was decorated with a lot of very expensive things Jenny wasn't allowed to touch.  
  
Calm down motherfucker, she told herself. But even approaching the white box was strangely difficult (We all KNOW how scary white boxes can be…). She picked it up and realized how turned on she was, the embers of her sexual hunger burning hot.  
  
Thrummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. The current tingled through her fingers – she couldn't take much more without crying out in ecstasy! In spite of her deep pleasure, the feeling of something wrong increased.  
  
Oh, hot holy hell!! I'll just throw the thing away, Jenny thought, surprised at the relief the idea brought. We'll play strip Candyland!!  
  
Michael was eyeing her with sensual interest.  
  
"What's that? A present?"  
  
"No – just a game I bought, but I'm going to get rid of it. Michael, do you know how to play strip Candyland?"  
  
"Hell yes!!" he cheered, his pants bulging, "So where's the sun bunny- boobs?"  
  
"Not here yet – oh, that's probably her. Would you move your sweet ass and get the door?"  
  
Michael just stared vaguely at the tuna though. Jenny pranced into the hallway, still holding the box.  
  
Summer Parker-Pearson was tiny, with thistle down curly hair and dimples you wanted to poke you fingers into. She was wearing a skin-tight china blue shirtdress and shivering madly.  
  
"It's like, freezing out here!!! How ever are we like, going to go like, swimming Jenny??" Summer said with her usual simple-minded expression (Jenny is Einstein compared to Summer when it comes to intelligence…which doesn't say much in poor Summer's favor, now does it?).  
  
"We're not," Jenny said gently.  
  
"Oh!! Then why ever did I like, bring my swimsuit???? Here's my like, present!!!" She piled a shirt box wrapped in aluminum foil on top of the white box Jenny was holding, added a small tote bag full of porn to the stack, and scurried to the living room.  
  
Jenny followed, put all the things on the coffee table, then pulled the white box from beneath them. Thrummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Summer was saying hiya to Michael and Zach and Dee.  
  
"Look," Jenny screamed shrilly, "if you guys will excuse me for a second-" She was cut off by the doorbell. This time she didn't want anybody else to answer it. "I'll get it!!!!!!"  
  
Alas, it was Tom-Tom-Tommy was on the doorstep!!!  
  
He looked DAMNED SEXY!! Of course he always looked pulsing hot to Jenny, but tonight he looked especially foxy, really devilishly seductive, with his dark brown hair neat and short, and that rakish, devil-may-care smile of his. Tom wore simple clothes like other guys, but somehow he always managed to look more sexually alluring that everyone else. He could make a pair of Basic Jeans look as if they'd been tailored to sculpt his every muscular ripple. Tonight he was wearing a fitted teal T-shirt under a button-down shirt that was a simply beautiful blue, an intense color that reminded Jenny of something, but she couldn't quite her finger on what (Oh Jenny, THINK – Could have something to do with a color that you've only seen once when you happened to wake up at the precise instant of dawn?)  
  
"Hi!!!" Jenny bellowed with gusto.  
  
He smiled rakishly and flapped his arms up and down like wings.  
  
Jenny went to him without a thought in her head (as usual), but held on the box. "Tom, there's something I want to talk to you about, alone. It's hard to explain-" she cooed with a raised eyebrow that is like a decisive brush stroke and an erotic grin.  
  
"Oh, YES, I'm getting laid on my birthday!!" he exclaimed loudly, arms still flapping, leading her down the hallway to the living room.  
  
"Quit it!!" she squealed flirtatiously. "Can you please be serious for a minute?"  
  
Tom was clearly in no mood to be serious. He polkaed her into the living room, where everyone but Audrey was singing Broadway musicals. He ignored her completely, because he's such an asshole. In spite of everything, Tom always made her feel better though, and soon her worries began to melt away. All of her fears of shadows and thrumming boxes seemed faraway and childish.  
  
Still, she felt a prickly-prickle of unease as he took the box from her, squawking, "What's this?? For me???"  
  
"It's a game!!" Michael chanted, "About which Jenny's being oh-so- mysterious. She can't let go of it, apparently."  
  
"I understand why, mmm…" Tom moaned as he caressed the box lightly. Jenny looked at him sharply, feeling a stab of jealousy. He certainly didn't seem to be joking, or at least no more than usual, but how could a white box give one such sensual pleasure? Why should Tom look so delighted by it, shifting it in his hands eagerly?  
  
There is something about it, Jenny thought, opening her mouth to cry out. But just then her mother came in from the back of the house, fastening her skirt and wafting perfume. Jenny clamped her mouth shut again.  
  
Mrs. Thorton had been blond like Jenny when she was a youngin', but over the years her hair had darkened to a honey-in-the-shadow tone. She smiled at everyone and wished Tom a happy birthday. "Now let me see," she said to Jenny, "Joey's out of the way at the Stensons', and we'll be back late Sunday, so everything should be ready for you."  
  
Then, as Jenny's father appeared behind her with a small suitcase, he added, "And no wild crazy sex," making a stroking motion with his hand. He was looking at Tom in a way that Jenny thought was what people meant when they said suspiciously. He'd taken to looking at Tom like that lately, and with damned good reason.  
  
"Daddy!!"  
  
"You know what I mean. Only the girls are staying the night, right?" (HELL NO!!)  
  
"Of course," she lied in the sweetest voice she could muster.  
  
"Right pumpkin." Her father squared his shoulders, looked at her mother, and adjusted himself. They both glanced around the living room one last time – as if to remember it (their memories both suck too) – and then marched out the door.  
  
"Don't have much faith in us, do they?" Michael screamed, looking after them.  
  
"It's my first party while they've been away for the weekend (oh how EXCITING!!!)," Jenny said like a small child having their first tea party. "That they've known about," she added deviously, guffawing loudly.  
  
When she looked back, Tom had the box open.  
  
"Oh-" Jenny sighed. And that was all she said. Because Tom was lifting out sheets of thick, glossy tagboard, printed in colors so brilliant they glowed. Jenny saw doors and windows, a porch, a turret. Shingles.  
  
"It's like, a dollhouse!! Yayee!!!" shrieked Summer. "No, I mean like, one of those like, paper thingies, like you get in like, big fat books for five year olds, and then like, cut out. A paper house!!"  
  
Not a game, thought Jenny. And not dangerous (Thank you Lordy Lord!!). Just a kids' toy. She felt a wave of relaxation cool her sexual tension somewhat, and when Audrey roared from the kitchen that the food was ready, she pranced almost dreamily.  
  
Tom was suitably surprised and impressed at the tuna dinner, and the fact that Audrey was responsible for it.  
  
"You can cook!!"  
  
"Of course I can cook motherfucker!! Why is it that everyone assumes I am a mere social ornament? (Because you are one...)" She looked up at him from under spiky jet-black eyelashes and smiled a coquettish smile.  
  
Tom rakishly smiled right back, ogling her boobies. Audrey kept very suggestively flirting with him as she served him, licking her lips at him, pushing her breasts up against his chest as she handed him a plate. When he moved away, she slanted a proud, significant glance at Jenny. You see what a sexy beast he finds me to be thanks to your ultra-predictability?? that glance said.  
  
Jenny didn't understand what that glance meant though. Jenny just smiled and waved back at Audrey cheerfully. Tom was always nice to other girls, and it didn't bother her. It didn't mean anything. She had once asked him about the variety of bras she kept finding in the back seat of his car, but he assured her that they were for his special bra collection at home, and of course she believed him. She was feeling very pleased with the world, full of such peace and love, as they all filled their plates and went back to the living room.  
  
There was no formal dining. They all sat around the coffee table, some on leather footstools, some directly on the Mexican paver tiles. Jenny was astounded that the white box with the sheets of tagboard wasn't already put aside.  
  
"You got some scissors?" Zach asked in his usual boring voice. "Actually, an X-Acto knife would be better. And a metal ruler, and glue."  
  
Jenny gawked at him, her mouth agape. "You're going to make it???"  
  
"Sure, why not? It looks like a good model."  
  
"It's ever-so-cute!!" Summer said and hiccupped.  
  
"You've GOT to be kidding!!" Jenny wailed. "A paper house…" She looked around pathetically for support.  
  
"It's a game," Dee barked. "See, there are instructions on the back of the lid. SCARY instructions." She shot a masculine smile around the room. "I like them."  
  
Michael, with bits of tuna hanging out of his rumpled mouth, looked a wee bit alarmed.  
  
"But how can you play a game with a paper house?? I don't understand!" Jenny yelped, tears filling her eyes, which are the color of pine needles. Her friends, used to her denseness, all gave her pitying looks, with the exception of Summer, who just stared at the ceiling without a thought in her head.  
  
"Come on baby, we'll explain it all to you using small words you'll understand right after you fetch us the scissors, okay honey-boo?" Tom said as if addressing a three year old learning to read their first word.  
  
Jenny never could resist that rakish, devil-may-care smile. "Oh, all right. I'll get them," she said, still wiping the tears from her cheeks as she went off the find the scissors.  
  
They put the model together as they ate, occasionally getting tuna on the tagboard. Tom supervised, naturally, considering he always has to be in charge of EVERYTHING or he throws a big-assed tantrum. Zach did a lot of the cutting, he'd practiced a lot making pretty paper dolls when he was little. Jenny watched his careful, clever, manicured fingers transform the flat sheets of paper into a three-foot-high, bitchin' Victorian house and was forced into adoring admiration.  
  
It had three floors and a turret and was open in front like a dollhouse. The roof was removable. Sheet after sheet had to be cut out to make all the chimney and cornices and balconies and eaves, but no one got tired of working, and only Michael complained, whining and griping the entire time. Finally Michael had to be sent from the room, only to wail by himself in the kitchen. Tom seemed delighted with the whole thing, whooping with joy. Even Audrey, whom Jenny would have thought to have far too big a stick up her ass to enjoy this, lent an experienced hand.  
  
"Look, here's some furniture to put inside – are you done with the first floor, Zach? You see, this is the parlor, and here's a little parlor table. From Sears, I think. Mother has one. I'll put it…here."  
  
"Here's a sort of like, Oriental screen thing," Summer said. "I'll put it by the like, table for all the like, dollies to like, look at."  
  
"There aren't any dolls!!" Jenny screamed loudly.  
  
"Yes, there are," Dee said huskily and grinned. She was flexing her incredibly long legs and reading the instructions to herself. "And they're us. It says we each get a paper doll for a playing piece, and we draw our own face on it, and then we move the pieces through the house, trying to get to the turret at the top. That's the game."  
  
"I thought you said it was scary!!" Tom grumbled bitchily.  
  
"I didn't finish asshole. It's a haunted house. (The "Psycho" violins scream!) You run into a different nightmare in every room while you're trying to get to the top. And you have to watch out for the Shower Man."  
  
"The what??" Jenny squealed.  
  
"The Shower Man. He's like the Sandman, only he brings you nightmares. He's lurking around inside, and if he catches you, he'll – well, listen. He'll 'bring to life your darkest fantasies and make you confess your most secret fears,'" she growled with obvious enjoyment.  
  
"All right!!" shrieked Tom.  
  
"Oh, geez geez geez," moaned Michael.  
  
"What kind of like, darkest fantasies?" asked Summer.  
  
Mystery, Jenny thought. Danger. Seduction. Fear. Hats. Toys. Sex!! Secrets revealed. Desires unveiled.  
  
Temptation.  
  
"What's wrong with you, Horny?" Tom said in an annoyed voice. "You're so nervous."  
  
"It's just – I don't know if I like this game!!" Jenny looked up at him pathetically. "But you do, don't you?"  
  
"Sure." He threw her a rakish, devil-may-care smile. "It's good for a laugh." Then he let out a giggle just to demonstrate his point.  
  
Jenny gave him a glare that sent sexual shivers through his loins and leaned against him. When she was away from Tom, her body longed to once again be intertwined with his in hot, writhing passion. Especially her front side because she was always on top of or below him.  
  
"Go get some of Joey's crayons," Dee was ordering Summer.  
  
"Yes Drill Sergeant!!" Summer shouted gravely and marched quickly out of the room.  
  
"We're going to need to draw a lot. Not just the paper dolls that are us; we're also supposed to draw our worst nightmare," Dee told the rest of them.  
  
"Why?" Michael wailed unhappily.  
  
"I told you, we have to face a different nightmare in every room. So we each draw one on a slip of paper and shuffle the papers and put them facedown on the floor of different rooms. Then when you get to room, you can look at the slip and see what that person's nightmare is."  
  
Tom wiped his fingers on his jeans and went to sit by Dee on the couch, bending his head over the instructions, his hand groping her leg. Zach, ignoring the rest of them as usual, was working silently. Zach didn't say anything unless he had something to say (well, DUH).  
  
"I think I'm going to like this!!" Audrey screamed, judiciously placing furniture in the different rooms. She was humming a little through her cherry-glossed lips, her hair shining copper under the track lighting.  
  
"Here are the like, crayons, and I found some like, colored pencils, too!!" Summer said as she galloped into the room waving a Tupperware container. "Now we can like, all draw!!" She rummaged through the sheets of glossy tagboard left in the box, finally producing one printed with naked human outlines. The paper dolls!! (Yippeeee!!!)  
  
They were all enjoying themselves. The game was a hit, the party a success. Jenny still felt cold inside, and put on her winter coat, hoping to improve the situation.  
  
She had to admit, though, that there was a certain satisfaction in cutting neatly along the dotted lines surrounding her doll's naked body. It brought back long ago memories. Coloring the paper doll filled her with almost more desire than she bear, the Crayola wax sliding richly onto the stiff matte tagboard.  
  
But when it came to drawing on the rectangle of paper Summer gave her next, she stopped, dropped, and rolled.  
  
Draw a nightmare? Her worst nightmare?? She couldn't! She just couldn't!!! Oh DEAR GOD how she couldn't!!!  
  
Because the truth was that Jenny had a nightmare. Her own personal, particular nightmare, based on something that happened long, long, long ago…and she couldn't remember it (BIG SURPRISE!!). She could never remember it when she was awake.  
  
The bad feeling was coming on, the one she sometimes got late at night while she was spanking herself. The scared feeling. Was she the only person in the whole wide world who woke up in the middle of the night sure that she'd discovered some terrible secret – only once she'd awakened, she couldn't remember what it was? Who felt sick with fear over something she couldn't remember? (Yes, you're the only one Jenny, and therefore you are crazy.)  
  
A picture flickered through her mind. Her mother's father. Thinning white hair, kind face, tired, twinkling eyes. He had entertained her when she was only but five years old with souvenirs from far-off places and magic tricks that had seemed real to a child. His basement had been full of the most wonderful things (What joy!!)!! Until the day something day happened (Oh, the mystery)…  
  
That last, ever so horrible day…  
  
The flicker died, and Jenny was jubilant. The only thing worse than not remembering was remembering in Jenny's useless opinion. It was better to leave the whole thing buried in the sand. The therapists had said differently at the time, but Jenny is a really bad listener and didn't really understand most of the advice they had given her.  
  
Anyway, she certainly couldn't draw it.  
  
The others were all sketching and sketching. Tom and Dee were gurgling together, using the lid of the game box as a desk. Summer was choking, shaking her thistle down curls, drawing something with a lot of different colors. Zach was grunting over his nightmare, his face even more intense than usual; Audrey was chortling in amusement.  
  
"Where's green? I need lots of green!" Michael bellowed, hunting among the crayons.  
  
"What for?" Audrey shot back, eyes freakishly wide.  
  
"Can't tell you. It's a secret."  
  
"That's right, they're secrets!!" Dee shouted heartily. "You don't get to see them until you reach the room they're in!"  
  
Nobody here could possibly have a secret from me, Jenny thought arrogantly. Except Audrey, I've known them all forever. I know when they've lost their first tooth and bought their first vibrator or lingerie. None of them could have a real secret – like mine.  
  
If she had one, why not the others? (No kidding Jen-Jen.)  
  
Jenny ogled Tom. Sex God Tom, headstrong and a little arrogant, as even Jenny had to admit, if only to herself. What ever could he be drawing now???  
  
"Mine needs green too. And yellow," he said.  
  
"Mine needs black," Dee said and gave a belly laugh.  
  
"All right, done!" Audrey cried out.  
  
"Come on, Jenny!" Tom said, sounding irritated. "Aren't you finished yet?"  
  
Jenny looked down at her paper. She had made an ugly doodle around the edges; the middle was blank. After a humiliating moment with everyone's eyes on her, she turned the paper over and gave it to Dee. She would just have to explain later.  
  
Dee shuffled all the slips and put them facedown in various rooms on the upper floors. "Now we put our paper dolls in the parlor downstairs," she said brusquely. "That's where we all start. And there should be a pile of game cards in the box, Summer, to tell us what to do and where to move. Put them in a stack on the table."  
  
Summer did while Audrey fixed the paper dolls on their little plastic anchors and set them up in the parlor.  
  
"We need just one more thing," Dee said gruffly. She paused dramatically and then thundered, "The Shower Man!!"  
  
"Here he is!" Summer squealed, picking up the last sheet of stiff tagboard from the box. "I'll like, cut out his like, friends first – the Creepy and the Leaky." She did, then hurled the figures at Audrey. The Creepy was a giant snake, and the Leaky was a bristling wolf. Their names were printed in blood-red Times New Roman.  
  
"Charming," Audrey said, snapping anchors on. "Anywhere in particular I'm supposed to put them, Dee?"  
  
"No, the cards will tell us when we meet them."  
  
"Here's the like, Shower Man. He can like, shower me if he wants; I like, think he's cute," Summer said with a raised eyebrow. Audrey took the paper doll from her, but as she did, Jenny grabbed her ass. Jenny couldn't speak. She couldn't breathe actually. Summer ran to get her a paper bag to breathe into from the kitchen.  
  
It couldn't be!!!!…But it was. There was no question about it. The printed face that stared up at her was unmistakable.  
  
It was the boy from the game store. The boy with eyes a color she'd only seen once when she happened to wake up at the precise instant of dawn. 


End file.
